Mixed meat ramen with graffiti eggplant and kabocha squash decorated with sweet potato cookies seasoned with saffron and stuffed with hard cheese and dates

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Just a short notice which is unlikely needed judging by the title I gave, but still here I go - unless you are ready to sacrifice your time and spend a small eternity in the kitchen , don't cook this.


PREPARE

Three types of meat - 4 upper part of the chicken leg, 3 small pork chops, 1 small beef steak- cut in small pieces, removed all bone, skin and fat.
Beef is harder to chew so you better beat a shit out of it. Use plastic foil to avoid feeding the walls. When you are at it, bang it on the floor, so that your neighbors know that you have money...
Olive oil for frying.
Chopped onions in finer way, cut small red sweet Florina pepper and one small Graffiti ( Sicilian) eggplant in thin stripes.
Cut in cubicles a half of the small Kabocha squash.
Peeled and sliced sweet potato.
Two medium tomatoes.
Small piece of ginger, peeled.
Small cubicles of hard cheese, stripe of bacon cut in small pieces and a few dates without pits.
Seasoning - salt, red sweet pepper, white pepper, powdered garlic, soy sauce, saffron and basil


PRE-PREPARATION

Meat - season with salt, white pepper, powdered garlic and basil. Quantity depends on your taste. Put aside to soak in spices while you prepare other things.

Boil tomatoes shortly and sunk them in cold water to remove skin. Cut them in smaller pieces in a plate. Set aside.

From the spare parts of meat, skin, bones, vegetables - the things you can't use for a main dish - prepare a base soup. No seasoning. Just boiled. If possible, remove excess fat from the top of a soup, if not leave it, you will remove it later from a main pot. When cooked, strain liquid. Set aside.

Usually it is good to cook base or soup foundation a day before, cool it and just remove solid fat from the top before using it. In this way you will not fight to remove fat. This meal is caloric enough without a fat.

This is a horrible idea, but I kept the cooked chicken skin for later ( decoration). If there is no skin, it doesn't matter. Less fat better - but it tastes great by the way.

I also have one bad habit, if I need to dry something or pre-prepare it, I use the microwave. Not the best choice, I bet there are much better, but I use what I have.

I microwaveD the stripped eggplant for a few minutes, seasonED it with soy sauce, let it soak in and then nukeD it shortly one more time. It needs to be a bit dried up but not mummified. Set aside.

I never used Kabocha squash before, and it looked really hard to peel and cut, so I cooked it separately. I cooked Kabocha squash in some water in a small pot until mildly soft. Don't overcook it, because it will fall apart in mail dish and end up invisible. Set aside.

Take big pot for main dish. Meal needs enough place for water and boiling.

COOKING

I fried chopped onions on olive oil in big pot, add sliced peppers, fried meat until brown and then started adding base soup slowly. When satisfied with result, added the rest of the soup, prepared eggplants, Kabocha squash ( with the water, should not be much water) , tomatoes, piece of ginger, teaspoon of sweet pepper powder and let it slow cook until I do the decoration.

DECORATION - TOPPING

Now, the sweet potato is not something I use every day. I usually just use ordinary potatoes. So I made my topping limited quantity for the test.

I cooked one small sweet potato and when it was done, I drained and mixed it with a small amount of flour, just enough so I can handle it into small cookies. I am sure there is a better thing to add but I had the flour at hand.

In an each sweet potato cookie I stuffed a small piece of hard cheese and a date.

I also tossed a few cubicles of cheese and a few dates into a main soup.

Once again I used a very handy microwave and dried the cookies a bit on a smallest heat. Then I turned them on the another side, decorated with small stripes of bacon and returned them to harden in a microwave again.

This is very short and light, if it is too much, cookie will turn into a boiling mess. Like I said, there are better ways to do this.

While that was at place, a main dish was already boiling and producing a layer of fat, so I removed fat and saved it in a separate pan.

You can fry sweet potato cookies and chicken skin in oil, but I decided to use what was already there.

Removed fat I brought to boil and left it like that until there was noting but fat. I fried previously prepared chicken skin in it and after I carefully fried sweet potato cookies shortly on one side only. This should be short enough to get a crispy base but not torch the cookies.

When done I dried cookies and crispy chicken skin from the excess fat on the grid. I season chicken skin with some salt and sweet potato cookies with water soaked saffron stems.

I usually do not use saffron, and I still have to learn much about it. But it definitely has to be wet for an effect. In this case I just use it for decoration, so it doesn't take much of it.

Make sure that both items are hot and steaming while seasoning them so that they soak in as much flavor, this especially goes for saffron. If you like the color of it, you can also add some dry stems or powder like I did for a better appeal.

Till now a soup should be almost done so I suggest you to taste it and add spices properly.

Add soy sauce first, then if needed salt and white pepper. Usually there is no necessity to play with the salt, because soy sauce is salty enough.

Make sure that your soup does not turn in a hefty paste or a sauce, if it does you will not be able to use it to soak your ramen noodles. Add water if it is too tick.

SERVING

When all this was done, I prepared ramen noodles, whatever brand you prefer, drain them of water and pour some liquid part of a soup on them to soak in some taste.

Then add the solids, and a bit more soup. Cut crispy chicken skin in small stripes and place sweet potato cookies on top. Serve hot.

OPINION

I am not much into the visual appeal ( and that is my plate, so I didn't get much of it lol) , but the entire dish was great and folks were amazed. Personally I think that I still have to work a lot on the cookies and with a few tries they will be not great but astonishing.



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